Establish Realistic IT Resource Management Practices

Holistically balance IT supply and demand to avoid overallocation.

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Contributors

Trevor Bramwell, ICT Project Manager, Viridor Waste Management
John Hansknecht, Director of Technology, University of Detroit Jesuit High School & Academy
Brian Lasby, Project Manager, Toronto Catholic District School Board
Jean Charles Parise, CIO & DSO, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Darren Schell, Associate Executive Director of IT Services, University of Lethbridge

Your Challenge

As CIO, you oversee a department that lacks the resource capacity to adequately meet organizational demand for new projects and services.
More projects are approved by the steering committee (or equivalent) than your department realistically has the capacity for, and you and your staff have little recourse to push back. If you have a PMO – and that PMO is one of the few that provides usable resource capacity projections – that information is rarely used to make strategic approval and prioritization decisions.
As a result, project quality and timelines suffer, and service delivery lags. Your staff are overallocated, but you lack statistical evidence because of incomplete estimates, allocations, and very little accurate data.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

IT’s capacity for new project work is largely overestimated. Much of IT’s time is lost to tasks that go unregulated and untracked (e.g. operations and support work, break-fixes and other reactive work) before project work is ever approved. When projects are approved, it is done so with little insight or concern for IT’s capacity to realistically complete that work.
The shift to matrix work structures has strained traditional methods of time tracking. Day-to-day demand is chaotic, and staff are pulled in multiple directions by numerous people. As fast-paced, rapidly changing, interruption-driven environments become the new normal, distractions and inefficiencies interfere with productive project work and usable capacity data.
The executive team approves too many projects, but it is not held to account for this malinvestment of time. Instead, it’s up to individual workers to sink or swim, as they attempt to reconcile, day after day, seemingly infinite organizational demand for new services and projects with their finite supply of working hours.

Impact and Result

Instill a culture of capacity awareness. For years, the project portfolio management (PPM) industry has helped IT departments report on demand and usage, but has largely failed to make capacity part of the conversation. This research helps inject capacity awareness into project and service portfolio planning, enabling IT to get proactive about constraints before overallocation spirals, and project and service delivery suffers.
Build a sustainable process. Efforts to improve resource management often falter when you try to get too granular too quickly. Info-Tech’s approach starts at a high level, ensuring that capacity data is accurate and usable, and that IT’s process discipline is mature enough to maintain the data, before drilling down into greater levels of precision.
Establish a capacity book of record. You will ultimately need a tool to help provide ongoing resource visibility. Follow the advice in this blueprint to help with your tool selection, and ensure you meet the reporting needs of both your team and executives.

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should develop a resource management strategy, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the ways we can support you in completing this project.

Establish Realistic IT Resource Management Practices – Executive Brief

1. Take stock of organizational supply and demand

Set the right resource management approach for your team and create a realistic estimate of your resource supply and organizational demand.

2. Design a realistic resource management process

Build a resource management process to ensure data accuracy and sustainability, and make the best tool selection to support your processes.

3. Implement sustainable resource management practices

Develop a plan to pilot your resource management processes to achieve maximum adoption, and anticipate challenges that could inhibit you from keeping supply and demand continually balanced.

Guided Implementations

This guided implementation is a nine call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Take stock of organizational supply and demand

Call #1 - Assess how accountability for resource management is currently distributed.

Call #2 - Create a realistic estimate of project capacity.

Call #3 - Map all sources of demand on resources at a high level.

Guided Implementation #2 - Design a realistic resource management process

Call #1 - Set your seven dimensions of resource management.

Call #2 - Jump-start spreadsheet-based resource management with Portfolio Manager Lite.

Call #3 - Build on the workflow to determine how data will be collected and who will support the process.

Guided Implementation #3 - Implement sustainable resource management practices

Call #1 - Define the scope of a pilot and determine logistics.

Call #2 - Finalize resource management roles and responsibilities.

Call #3 - Brainstorm and plan for potential resistance to change, objections, and fatigue from stakeholders.

Book Your Workshop

Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Take Stock of Organizational Supply and Demand

The Purpose

Obtain a high-level view of current resource management practices.
Identify current and target states of resource management maturity.
Perform an in-depth time-tracking audit and gain insight into how time is spent on project versus non-project work to calculate realized capacity.

Key Benefits Achieved

Assess current distribution of accountabilities in resource management.
Delve into your current problems to uncover root causes.
Validate capacity and demand estimations with a time-tracking survey.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Perform a root-cause analysis of resourcing challenges facing the organization.

Root-cause analysis

1.2

Create a realistic estimate of project capacity.

Tab 2 of the Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, the Time Audit Workbook, and survey templates

1.3

Map all sources of demand on resources at a high level.

Tabs 3 and 4 of the Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

1.4

Validate your supply and demand assumptions by directly surveying your resources.

Complete the Time Audit Workbook

Module 2: Design a Realistic Resource Management Process

The Purpose

Construct a resource management strategy that aligns with your team’s process maturity levels.
Determine the resource management tool that will best support your processes.

Key Benefits Achieved

Identify the ideal dimensions to move forward with for the resource management project.

A tool selection that is appropriate for your processes and that your team will be able to support.

Determine a realistic amount of time and effort to dedicate toward maintaining the strategy.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Action the decision points in Info-Tech’s seven dimensions of resource management.

A wireframe for a right-sized resource management strategy

2.2

Review resource management tool options, and depending on your selection, prepare a vendor demo script or review and set up Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite.

A vendor demo script or Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite.

2.3

Customize a workflow and process steps within the bounds of your seven dimensions and informed by your tool selection.

A customized resource management process and Resource Management Playbook.

Module 3: Implement Sustainable Resource Management Practices

The Purpose

Develop a plan to pilot your new processes to test whether you have chosen the right dimensions for maintaining resource data.
Develop a communication plan to guide you through the implementation of the strategy and manage any resistance you may encounter.

Key Benefits Achieved

Identify and address improvements before officially instituting the new resource management strategy.
Identify the other factors that affect resource productivity.
Implement a completed resource management solution.

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Develop a pilot plan.

Process Pilot Plan Template

3.2

Perform a resource management start/stop/continue exercise.

A refined resource management process informed by feedback and lessons learned

3.3

Develop plans to mitigate executive stakeholder, team, and structural factors that could inhibit your implementation.

Stakeholder management plan

3.4

Finalize the playbook and customize a presentation to help explain your new processes to the organization.

Resource Management Communications Template

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this Blueprint, and what our clients have to say.

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Testimonial

GSW Manufacturing

Guided Implementation

8/10

$7,941

City of Saskatoon, SK

Guided Implementation

10/10

$100K

115

Matt is an extremely knowledgeable advisor and has really helped fill in gaps in areas that we were struggling with. The workshop that we had in May really opened our eyes to the value of estimating available resource capacity at the time of intake and even though we have not fully implemented this model yet we know it will help us mature our process greatly.

Kentucky Housing Corporation

Guided Implementation

10/10

$13,236

The best parts of my experience is having a friendly coach that is willing to listen and provide tools that are available to get through a difficult process if done without it. Tools to be utilized at my leisure.

GSW Manufacturing

Guided Implementation

9/10

$13,236

York Region District School Board

Guided Implementation

10/10

$1,900

Lamb Weston

Guided Implementation

9/10

$13,236

Some of the tools are difficult to use and require resources that are blocked by Microsoft.

Peoples Bank

Guided Implementation

10/10

$6,618

Always great advice from Travis! He has a wealth of knowledge and experience which has served my company well. I appreciate his willingness to always support our initiatives and only a phone call away.

University Of Regina

Workshop

9/10

N/A

Facilitation was excellent. The deliverables were very good as well. No bad or poor experiences.

City of Saskatoon, SK

Workshop

10/10

$23,500

Matt was a really good facilitator who was able to tie infotech material into our current situation very well. There were no bad parts of the experience it was all very positive

Modesto Irrigation District

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Montana Department of Revenue

Guided Implementation

10/10

$33,091

Moog Inc

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

GSW Manufacturing

Guided Implementation

9/10

$25,149

Best part is that Infotech works on my schedule. It can be tough to find time to work on management tasks. Matt has been very flexible and supportive in the process yet attempts to keep me moving forward. I don't think I have a worst part. The worst part is the effort it takes me to understand what I should be doing. I don't know if there are easier tools to get through to me or not. I just need to put in the effort to make the experience worth while.

Amicus Therapeutics

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

It's hard to estimate savings however the feedback and advice from Barry was just what we needed to make sure we were on the right track. Extremely timely and helpful

Bauer Hockey LLC

Guided Implementation

10/10

$66,183

WellPet, LLC

Guided Implementation

10/10

$125K

105

Barry has provided insights which will enable me to reconcile demand/supply in IT more effectively. Invaluable insight!

Phoenix Contact

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Getting started and difficult to asses. However, so fare so good.

Westmoreland Mining LLC

Guided Implementation

10/10

$2,647

Somehow you always have what I need, and it saves me so much time trying to come up with it on my own. Truly thankful for the clear, professional guidance.

Lee County Clerk of Courts

Workshop

9/10

N/A

MicroPort Orthopedics Inc.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$13,236

Knowledgeable staff and very useful tools. Nothing bad to speak of.

Commonwealth of VA, State Corporation Commission

Guided Implementation

8/10

$66,183

Central Arizona Project

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

Matt is always willing and eager to help provide the correct tools, and level of tool complexity, to match our needs.

VCU Health System Authority

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

UCLA

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

It is great getting clarification to our questions during the calls. This often leads to other questions/concerns that need to be discussed internally as we work through some of the tools. One of the bad things about the guided implementations is the lag time in-between calls and maintaining momentum/urgency between calls. This was communicated early on for guided implementations so it is not a surprise, but a reality.

MicroPort Orthopedics Inc.

Guided Implementation

8/10

$62,873

Best - The guidance provided is very much appreciated and is very helpful. Another perspective to the issues at hand is also a plus. Worst - Current business workload is so overwhelming that I feel as if I'm doing a disservice to the InfoTech group that is trying to help.

Commonwealth of VA, State Corporation Commission

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

County of Salt Lake

Guided Implementation

7/10

N/A

I appreciated Matt's help to show me ideas to use smartsheet for the resource management.

Texas General Land Office and Veterans Land Board

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Matt has been an integral part of my career over the past 2 years as I've worked in an almost singular capacity to build out the agency's technology PPMO. The successes that we are now reaping from this process being in place are invaluable to the success of the IT program area as well as the agency overall. Many thanks to Matt!

State Department Federal Credit Union

Guided Implementation

9/10

$132K

Best: Always have the tools needed, working with Matt is always a pleasure and he provides us with great recommendation. worst: Tools should have a guide or tool tip to help us fill out the tool as we go.

Central Arizona Project

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Great analyst feedback and guidance. No negatives.